Partisan politics is alive and well in the race for the next justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. And that is deeply troubling, though not surprising in these hyper-partisan times.

All three candidates for Tuesday’s primary election have, to one degree or another, used politics in an attempt to garner votes for a seat on the state’s highest, supposedly “non-partisan” court.

Judge Rebecca Dallet used footage of President Donald Trump in a campaign ad with two articles about Obamacare and the Great Lakes Restoration Project in the background. The narrator, referring to Trump, says: “He’s attacked our civil rights and our values. She’ll protect them.” When criticized over her ad, Dallet said, in part, “Government-by-tweet is a terrible idea.”

Dallet also recently blasted Trump in an op-ed, writing in The Capital Times that she wakes up every day wondering, “What nonsense will President Trump tweet today, and what group of Americans will he attack?”

Judge Michael Screnock is clearly the conservative in the race, backed almost universally by Republicans. Screnock recently received a $31,152 in-kind donation from the state Republican Party. Screnock’s campaign also showcased Republican Congressman Glenn Grothman’s support of Screnock in a Facebook post. Screnock’s Twitter account uses the hashtag #wiright, but Screnock still claims politics should play no role in judicial elections.

Screnock often invokes politics when he uses the largely meaningless trope about “liberal activist judges” who “legislate from the bench,” as if conservative judges simply “call balls and strikes” and “liberal” judges just throw caution to the wind and make up law. The broad-sweeping claim is wrong. Law is not like baseball. It’s filled with gray areas, not black and white. An “activist” judge is generally just a judge with which another person disagrees.

Attorney Tim Burns has taken a much more direct, unabashed approach to politics — openly telling voters that, if elected, Burns would be an “unshakeable champion of liberal, Democratic and progressive values.” Burns has criticized the voter ID law and called the Foxconn deal “deeply troubling.” Burns says he is a Democrat and in one of his ads, Burns even has a “D” next to his name. Burns said recently in an interview, “I made my political views clear because I think voters deserve candor when you vest people with this much power.”

While the United States Supreme Court has ruled that judicial candidates can talk about their views on political issues, the question is whether that is appropriate. Many judicial candidates have avoided discussing their views on politics, probably because most people believe the judiciary should be the last vestige of non-partisanship, at least as much as possible.

As judicial races have become more expensive and infused to the hilt with partisan cash, many have suggested the only real solution, although not a perfect one, is true campaign finance reform, such as public financing of judicial elections.

This issue matters to voters — a lot. A 2009 Public Policy poll found 91 percent of Wisconsin voters were concerned about special-interest group spending on ads for judicial elections and 72 percent believed campaign contributors influence judicial elections.

A 2015 New York Times/CBS News poll found a majority of Republicans and Democrats favor overhauling the current system of unlimited money in elections by requiring disclosure of campaign contributors and restricting the amount of money that can be given by wealthy contributors.

Most people expect a high level of forthrightness from judicial candidates, who are supposed to be fair, reasoned and non-partisan.

No reasonable person would deny the existence of at least a perception of bias when a special-interest group that contributes an enormous sum of money to a particular justice then appears before that justice in a case.

Burns has called the idea that Wisconsin Supreme Court races are “non-partisan” a “fairy tale.” Whatever you think of Burns, he is correct about that, at least in modern times.

The good news is we can fix many of these issues, at least in large part, if we demand true campaign finance reform.